2301E Reflection Paper Workshop

Survey Part II…

Discussion Question #1 What do you think your reflection paper should include?

Introductory Notes -This assignment does not require new research -It is a reflection about what you have learned during your community-based research project -You will have the opportunity to submit your paper for publication on the MacNaughton Teaching Project website!

“Reflect to learn - Reflection acts as the “bridge” or “link” between academic concepts and real world experiences in experiential learning. Reflective practice can help you make meaning of and extract learning from your experiences – a foundational step for both theorizing and continuous learning.” Source:

Before you begin…. Review the course learning objectives: 1. Recognize and define main themes across the broad sweep of U.S. social, religious, and political history 2. Find and analyze primary sources 3. Question and evaluate historiographical debates among U.S. historians across a range of topics 4. Recognize the sources and interpretive frameworks that have shaped the way in which the story of the American past has been told 5. Engage the larger question of why any of this matters to us here and now. As the course outline notes, the course material invites you to think about the relationship between academic history, and a broader public consciousness that often places a different value on knowledge of the past

Discussion Question #2 Why does this project matter? To whom?

Themes of the Course -What is freedom, and how does the definition of freedom change over time? -What have been the avenues to social, economic and political power, and to whom are those avenues opened and closed? -Was the choice really, “give me liberty, or give me death?” -What sources and historical interpretations influence the way in which the story of the American past is told?

Ask yourself: Where does your project work fit in relation to the overall project goals? How did your work intersect with the work of our community partners for the project? (Fugitive Slave Chapel Preservation Project; Oberlin College Archives; Historians against Slavery)

Discussion Question #3 What was the hardest part of the project?

What to include? an introduction and a thesis (what overall assessment of the CBL project will be presented in the paper?) a brief description of your part in the project discussion of challenges (intellectual, mainly, but you can mention logistical/technical challenges)

What to include – continued… a discussion of larger historiographical themes that your project work has addressed (or perhaps was not able to address.) conclusions about the larger context of the project (publication, reception, interpretation of the history of slavery/anti-slavery). notes and bibliography (include citations to course material)

Discussion Question #4 Was there anything you would have changed in the project?

Discussion Question #5 What historiographical approaches did you use in completing this project? Did you find yourself engaging in historiographical debates?

Questions?